A very on brand and slightly hilarious exchange between the bosses of Steam owner Valve and the Epic Games Store has been revealed in an ongoing court case.
As reported by GameDiscoverCo, the lawsuit between Valve and Wolfire Games — which alleges Valve uses the dominance of Steam to control game prices across the PC gaming space — has revealed a handful of emails between Epic Games boss Tim Sweeney and Valve chief Gabe Newell that have pulled back the curtain on the chat that went on between the two CEOs circa December 2018.
Sweeney had expressed concern about the economics of Steam’s 30% platform fees, which he said were no longer justifiable. But it was Valve’s addition of a sliding scale royalty change that reduced Valve’s cut on high-grossing games, and growing anger at Apple over the App Store, that sent Sweeney over the edge. Writing in an email sent to Newell and Valve’s Erik Johnson, Sweeney said:
“Later this week, we’ll be escalating a conversation with Apple in which an authoritarian government (not China) is demanding that either Epic alter Fortnite on iOS or Apple block it, and we’ll be responding with a memo on the human rights principles that would be violated by either action. We’ll be refusing and asking Apple to either continue to carrying Fortnite or to permit Epic to distribute it directly to customers through an Enterprise Certificate, and escalating as needed. Fortnite is consistently the top-grossing game on iOS.
So, the question of open platforms and store economics will be foremost on Apple execs’ minds this week. I believe the best outcome can be achieved if Apple speedily concludes that the combination of an app store monopoly and 30% fees is untenable, and that opening iOS up is the best stop-loss strategy.
Right now, you assholes are telling the world that the strong and powerful get special terms, while 30% is for the little people. We’re all in for a prolonged battle if Apple tries to keep their monopoly and 30% bycutting backroom deals with big publishers to keep them quiet. Why not give ALL developers a better deal? What better way is there to convince Apple quickly that their model is now totally untenable?”
Valve COO Scott Lynch forwarded this email to both Newell and Johnson, saying: “You mad bro?”
Wolfire Games CEO David Rosen is leading the class-action lawsuit representing game developers against Valve, saying his motivation is that “gamers and game developers are being harmed by Valve’s conduct”. Meanwhile, over five years after sending the “assholes” email, Sweeney’s war with Apple over the control of apps on iPhones shows no sign of ending.
Image Credit: Rachel Luna/Getty Images
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
